Jackalopes and Jobberknolls
by Mede
Summary: Harry Potter was Sorted into Slytherin. Then Harry Potter was Sorted into Gryffindor. A series of vignettes from Luna's perspective on the changes that result.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Yes, this would be yet another take on the Boy-Who-Lived-and-twin plotline, but it _doesn't_ feature alive!James&Lily or Mistaken-Boy-Who-Lived, and it does include a slightly more realistic result of the Dursleys' care and Luna, so hopefully it's reasonably original. I like Luna--although I'm afraid my version of her might better be considered slightly AU, because who can manage a canonesque Luna besides J. K. Rowling?

This is a relatively short story (just under twenty thousand words), which I've just finished except for minor tweaking so it should be all up within the next few weeks. Also, in the first scene, it was pointed out to me that technically McGonagall shouldn't be surprised at the twins since she was there with Dumbledore the night Hagrid dropped them off and all... so let's just say in this version she wasn't there. Or something. I claim the power (/excuse) of AU.

All comments, critiques, and questions welcome!

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**Jackalopes and Jobberknolls**

When Professor McGonagall reached the P's in her yearly list of students to be Sorted, particularly astute listeners could pick up a special tone to her voice when she announced, "Potter, Harry." Most listeners, though, only heard the words themselves and immediately gave into excited whispers buzzing around the Great Hall. After a brief pause following her announcement one of the children clustered in line detached himself and came slowly forward--short and slight in his enveloping robe, half-upright tousled black hair, and large, bright green eyes watching no one through thick black-rimmed glasses.

The Hat slipped over his face, covering it, and was silent for a moment before opening its flap and declaring, "SLYTHERIN!"

Three tables groaned despondently, and the fourth's applause sounded particularly smug as the young wizard joined his new House. Astute observers could easily see McGonagall's personal disappointment--for she was, after all, Head of Gryffindor--but then her eyes widened as she moved on to the next name on her list and she actually checked it twice before almost stammering, "Potter, Harry."

The whispers died for a moment in place of blank puzzlement--and a _second_ identical small, green-eyed brunet appeared from the line, made his quiet way up and took his place on the stool.

The pause this time was much shorter before the Hat decreed, "GRYFFINDOR!"

One table exploded into cheers, no longer bothered by the conundrum since they got him; one just sniffed, since they already had him; two made a few sporadic claps out of politeness, still preoccupied by trying to figure out why and how there were _two_ Boys-Who-Lived (and vaguely hoping that maybe two more would pop out of the woodwork for them).

* * *

By the beginning of the twins' second year, they were still regarded as one of Hogwarts' favorite subjects of speculation, particularly as all of the newly Sorted first years had to be caught up on all the explanations and events so far. At the Ravenclaw table they were succinctly informed that it was Hadrian Potter in Slytherin and Harold Potter in Gryffindor but they both only answered to Harry, they had both been registered as babies but the hospital assumed it was one boy's file accidentally duplicated because of the names, which was why no one else ever knew, and that they both had identical lightning-bolt scars which everyone agreed made no sense and no one was sure which of them was actually the Boy-Who-Lived. Just hearing it cemented all the first years as rabid Harry Potter puzzle solvers.

Luna Lovegood was no exception, but she paid no attention nor contributed to the excited chatter of the children around her. She regarded both boys from the distance across tables with a vague smile, watching the two sitting quietly amongst their friends, much like her, lifting bits of food to their mouths and occasionally replying to someone. Luna could hardly see how they were different, though the older students' conversation made it clear that the two had to be polar opposites inside, to have been Sorted into those two Houses. Besides, they were hardly ever together.

She continued to observe them in the following weeks whenever they happened to be around, and the faint smile rarely left her face during it. "Harry!" the Gryffindor's bushy-haired friend would say, dashing after him as he passed through one of the corridors outside the Library. He would pause, and she'd catch up, panting, and then add "Harry?" as a shorthand check. About half the time he would nod, and she would go on with whatever, while he listened quietly. She seemed to always be researching something and liked to inform him of interesting discoveries or ask his opinion of whether something sounded accurate. The other half of the time he would shake his head, and she would look slightly embarrassed and apologize or ask if he knew where his brother was. Sometimes he shrugged; sometimes he would give her an exact location without pause or thought.

The Slytherins were so cautious of not being wrong they mostly didn't seem to try to get close to either Harry in the corridors. The Gryffindor's other main friend--or at least, he seemed to consider himself so--never bothered to ask which twin it was, simply assuming it was his, and would accost him with an arm slung over his shoulder and either animated complaints of Snape's treatment in their last lesson or predictions of one of the national Quidditch team's chances in their next game. Luna's smile always grew the times when Harry said, without any inflection, "Professor Snape," and the redhead's freckles stood out a bit as he hastily pulled his arm away and retreated in the opposite direction. Harry noticed Luna once afterward and smiled back briefly, a smile that she understood perfectly without a word spoken between them. Afterward, whenever she passed him in a corridor, she said pleasantly, "Hello, Harry," exactly the same whether he was wearing a green and silver or red and gold tie (on the rare occasions he was wearing one at all). The one she hadn't shared a smile with never reacted any differently than the one who had.

Then the message on the wall in blood announcing the return of the Heir appeared, and overnight talk abandoned Hogwarts' favorite doppelgangers to turn to the horror. It didn't take long for the gossip to entwine the two, though, and soon Harry was firmly entrenched as not just the Heir of Slytherin but You-Know-Who himself's dark apprentice, tainted by the evil touch of that fateful night, while Harry was beyond all shadow of a doubt the true Boy-Who-Lived, savior of the wizarding world. Their respective friends took to defending them and sneering at the other harder than ever, and Luna kept smiling and greeting them both the same as ever. She thought they could probably use impartial support.

Gilderoy Lockhart, their beautifully ineffective Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, put together an open dueling club and Slytherin Harry was revealed to all the school as a living speaking Parselmouth. Luna wasn't there, but everyone else could talk of nothing else. Luna observed them quietly and neither seemed particularly affected by it. They had much more sense than the rest of the students.

She saw them both after in one of their rare moments together, sitting by the lake reading books. She stopped and smiled as usual, but that didn't seem sufficient after such hubbub, so she inquired, "Which one of you is which today?"

Both boys looked up at her, not even glancing at one another. "What?" Harry said.

"I always think I'd do just the same if I were two," she said placidly. "It must be so nice being able to be whichever person you feel like being. I'm an only child."

Now the boys glanced at one another, and after a second the other Harry said, "We're each in the different House."

She nodded. "Of course. So you can each be whichever you like, and each still be Harry." She smiled, and after another quick glance the two slowly smiled tentatively back. The one on the left scooted to the side, and the one on the right said politely, "Like to sit down?"

She settled herself between them, and the boys examined her from either side with curious impartiality. She didn't mind. It was how she looked at everything too.

"Can you tell when we switch?" Harry asked.

"I know you're you and you're you, and you're both the same. But knowing when you switch would mean knowing your original, and what does that matter?"

The boys smiled again, something she didn't often see them do with their friends. She thought it probably made them more comfortable to know that she understood them.

"I was Sorted into Slytherin," Harry said.

"And me Gryffindor," Harry said. "We change our colors for who we feel like talking to."

Luna nodded again. "And now for who you feel like being talked about?" she added sympathetically.

Both boys shrugged together. "Extremes of both of us, I guess," Harry said, seeming indifferent. "As long as we know, no one else matters."

"Unless you might; no one's ever known both of us yet," Harry said frankly. Luna felt warm with pleasure at their telling her that.

"I've never known anyone else who matters either," she agreed. "Except maybe Ginny, but we haven't really spoken since we went into different Houses. I'm not sure if I miss her."

The boys didn't really seem to care. "Are you going to tell anyone about us?" the one on her left asked.

She smiled. "Why? Everybody has something unusual about them if you look long enough. No one would believe me anyway."

"Guess so," the one on the right considered. "No one believes we aren't different." He looked at her again. "We can be, though, if anyone does try to see. We won't ever let anything separate us unless we decide we want it to."

Luna nodded simply. "You're twins. Magical twins."

"Guess so," he said again, relaxing. The one on her left nodded and picked up his book, turning slightly away from them, but Harry on her right went on conversing quite sociably, just like he did with his friends. Luna didn't mind his brother's apparent disinterest and chatted on for quite a while, getting into a discussion of the likelihood of crumple-horned snorkacks surviving somewhere. Harry didn't seem to care that no one else believed in them.

* * *

"Hello, Harry," Luna greeted him one night after that when she arrived on the Astronomy tower.

"Hullo, Luna," he said absently in response, already peering up through his telescope.

"Careful, mate, I've seen her talking with Slytherins," the redhead on his other side hissed.

"I've only been talking with Harry," Luna said mildly, smiling at him. He fidgeted.

"I'm not scared of my brother, Ron," Harry said without looking away from his telescope.

The redhead looked torn. "Harry--mate--I know he's your brother, but--"

"Oh not again!" the bushy-haired girl huffed as she came up behind them, toting a large bag of books. "I think Harry knows his own brother a little better than you do, Ronald, and it's his business who he trusts!" He looked sulky, and she turned away with another huff to face Luna. "Excuse me, you are...?"

"A Slytherin spy," the redhead muttered, without much force.

"Luna Lovegood, a Ravenclaw," Harry said, still paying attention to the telescope.

"Hello," Luna said, smiling.

The bushy-haired girl frowned. "You're not in our year, are you? What are you doing up here?"

"I want to see if Mars and Venus are going to acknowledge one another when they dance, since they've been placed to represent such difficult to reconcile states. I think they should; love and war have never really been separate, have they?" Luna explained. The bushy-haired girl was so scholarly she might enjoy such a discussion.

But she just blinked, several times, and said, "Well... er, be that as it may, I don't think you can stay here during our class."

"Oh, all right," Luna said placidly. "I'll try the Owlery then."

The bushy-haired girl nodded brusquely and moved away to an unclaimed telescope, muttering to herself about finding Mars and Venus. Harry pulled away from his for a moment and shared a grin with Luna as she left.

* * *

"Hello. You look stressed," Luna commented, pausing by the tree where both boys lay stretched out, one on his stomach and one on his back.

"This Heir business is getting ridiculous," Harry grunted without opening his eyes. "Everyone who doesn't expect me to kill them expects me to save them. And nobody knows anything more than anybody else, so why should we?"

Luna sat down with them to consider. "Snakes don't have any secrets to tell?"

He snorted. "'Rip... tear... kill...' So it's some kind of snake responsible; doesn't mean we're better to risk our lives than the grownups who're supposed to be protecting all of us."

"Everybody's the same," the other Harry grumbled, throwing stones into the lake. "If we weren't taking turns I'd've hexed them all by now for badmouthing my brother."

Luna saw that they really needed an opportunity to let their frustrations out, so she inquired, "The same hex for all of them, or each their own?"

He considered. His pebbles started to skip once or twice before sinking. "I'd like to see Draco's veins turn muddy every time he says 'just half-blood.' And maybe grow warts whenever he makes another 'oh I'm with the Heir all right' nudge."

Luna giggled. Harry's stones were flying across the surface. "What about the other one?"

"Ron?"

They established that Ron would be best punished by charming everyone else to believe he was the ickle little Slytherin mascot, the least discreet of the Hufflepuffs should be forced to suffer going around with transfigured rat noses and whiskers, and any Ravenclaws should have their books start shrieking on sight of them and wipe their pages blank for every homework and test. The bushy-haired Gryffindor Harry reluctantly decided was so far exempt--whatever she believed about the Heir of Slytherin, she was taking pains to keep her mouth shut about it around both of them. But Professor Lockhart deserved something so humiliating none of them could even imagine it, and Headmaster Dumbledore's beard ought to turn pinker every day he didn't do something rather than let all the blame and expectation fall on the twins' respective shoulders. But, they agreed, the hitch was that the crazy old wizard might decide he liked his beard pink.

By the end both Harrys were smiling as much as Luna at each new invention, and even worked out the practical details of how to do a few just for the challenge.

"You might try telling one of the teachers it must be a snake," Luna suggested when they had finished, and all three were leaning back staring at the clouds. "They can't hear, so they might not even know that much."

Harry blinked. "Might be," he said in a tone of discovery. "Who'd listen to us, though?"

"Professor Flitwick's exciteable, but he always has the answer for getting into the common room," Luna mused. "He told me about a nargle he thinks he saw once too when he thought I was a bit homesick."

The boys glanced at each other. "Okay," Harry said. "We'll tell him."

* * *

The twins looked troubled the first time Luna saw them during her second year, so she drifted over and inquired why.

"We have a godfather," Harry said, looking even more so. "Sirius Black."

Luna blinked thoughtfully. A lot of people lately seemed to be talking about him. "Is it nice to have family?"

"He's supposed to be trying to kill us," the other Harry said. "But I don't know. I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense. He knew our parents--he must've known we were twins. Would he treat us like we were twins?"

"His family was Slytherin, but he was Gryffindor. Would he only like one of us--maybe opposite of everyone else if he's dark? Is he really after both of us?" Harry went on, looking a little frustrated.

Luna nodded in sympathy. Those were difficult questions. "I suppose the easiest way to find out is to ask him. Whether he tells the truth or not, you'll be able to see his face."

"He's in hiding," the other Harry said. "And if we see him he might try to kill us."

"You don't need to worry about that." Luna smiled. "Villains always explain themselves first. So you can listen and then escape."

The boys glanced at one another and shrugged together.

"You think?" Harry asked, doubtfully.

She smiled again, serenely. "He'll want to tell you."

* * *

Luna didn't often seek the two out, especially when they weren't likely to be together, but in this case she had a feeling it was important enough that she ought to. She found Harry in the library, with, luckily, Harry just an aisle away.

"Professor Lupin mentioned he found a boggart for the third years' next classes," she explained.

Both boys immediately tensed, which was interesting. She didn't think many people really knew what their greatest fear was.

"Which House first?" Harry muttered, without seeming to listen for an answer. His tie turned silver and green. "I'll start muttering about green light as soon as he announces it; he won't let me get near it..."

"I'll look him straight in the eye and say I don't want anybody seeing mine if he asks," Harry determined, turning his tie red and gold with an absent tap.

"I don't think it really shows greatest fears anyway," Luna said calmingly, since they still looked tense. "For instance, mine's infinity--I used to try to imagine it when I was little, time and space going on and on forever without any end, and I'd terrify myself, feeling like I was losing my grip on my tiny little mind and getting lost forever in it, with no end, not even death. But how could a boggart copy that?"

The boys looked at one another, relaxing a bit as they were distracted from their own fear. "You think it just mimics something that scares you, then?" one asked.

"Well, yes." Luna tapped her chin thoughtfully. "I think it mimics whatever scares you that you're thinking of most. After all, changing it just requires imagining something else strongly."

"That makes sense," the other said after another glance. "Don't think we could manage something else though--it's always in our minds here."

Luna was terribly curious, but she didn't want to pry. It made friendships uncomfortable to ask a lot of questions that didn't want answering, and she liked to think they were friends.

"You can't do anything about it?" she asked instead, sympathetically.

"No," Harry said in a very low voice, not looking at anything. "Already do all we can." He touched his tie.

Luna thought she understood, but they explained anyway. She was warmed by their confidance.

"It's all of them that scares us--always trying to separate us. Making just one of us their hero, one of us suspicious. If they ever worked--"

"We'd be alone," Harry said softly. "We haven't got anything but _us_."

"Never dealt with it before we came here. Half the time Dursleys weren't sure there wasn't really just one of us," the other said almost as softly with a tiny, bitter sort of smile.

Luna decided they both needed a hug. But she couldn't reach them both, so she said as comfortingly as she could, "It must be very nice your parents named you both Harry, then."

That made them exchange the tiny smile without so much bitterness.

"We're not really either Harry," one said with a sort of daring. She realized that this was the first time they'd ever told anyone else. "Well, Harry's really either of us. But for just us--"

"I'm Ri, and he's Ro," the other finished, a little shyly. "From Hadrian and Harold."

Luna didn't know how to express herself, so she just gave them the brightest smile she could. They both smiled back, still a little shyly but now also looking a little happy.

"If you ever get surprised by a boggart," she said suddenly in a burst of inspiration, "think about having to get up and give a speech in front of the whole Great Hall about the Dark Lord's undershorts."

* * *

"And the Champion for Hogwarts is... Cedric Diggory," Dumbledore announced, to the Houses' applause. Luna looked at the Goblet and wondered why it was still flickering.

A fourth slip suddenly spat out of it, silencing everyone, and she instinctively twisted to look toward Ri and Ro even as Dumbledore's voice echoed hollowly, "Harry Potter." She made a mental note to ask if they had run into any Chinese who might have cursed them with an interesting life, and felt proud of them when neither looked terribly affected even though everyone else was glaring or whispering.

"Which one?" Gryffindor Harry asked.

Dumbledore looked at the parchment, and the Tournament officials and other Headmasters crowded around him to look too. "It only says Harry Potter," Ludo Bagman said loudly. "Well, boys, which of you entered?"

"Neither," Harry said flatly. "I told everyone I had no interest in risking my life and limbs again for nothing but money and glory I don't need."

"And what school is Harry Potter representing?" Slytherin Harry drawled. "The Goblet isn't supposed to choose two Champions for one, is it?"

"Of course not, of course not, someone must have come up with a fourth," Ludo Bagman said, still loudly. Luna thought he was starting to look nervous. "Well, one of you needs to join the other Champions, and then we'll sort this out..."

Gryffindor Harry picked up his fork. "I didn't enter."

Slytherin Harry crossed his arms. "If I'd be forced to participate for a different school, then, I want to know which one so it gets credit for the outcome."

"We don't _know_," Ludo Bagman said, very patiently and very more nervously.

"If both Mr. Potters would please adjourn to the next room," Dumbledore proclaimed, "we need not keep dinner waiting for the rest of the evening."

Luna watched the twins silently come together at the end of the line of adults filing away and mentally recited a Chinese charm she'd once heard against evil attention as strongly as she could. She hoped it was really Chinese.

* * *

"Harry--" The bushy-haired girl came up short and stared at Luna for a moment. "How come you've got your wand behind your ear?"

"If I had another one, I'd look like a jackalope," Luna said vaguely, smiling. The girl had interrupted them.

She looked lost. "What? What's a jackalope?"

"They're native to the States, especially the Western ones. It's too cold for them here," Luna explained. "They look like very large hares with antlers like deer. They can be quite dangerous. Fortunately they're terribly shy. Muggles don't even believe they exist."

"Yes... you don't say..." She began to look a little edgy. "Are you sure that's just muggles?"

But she hurried away without waiting for an answer.

"I think that's a bit of their own magic that no one knows about, to make everyone avoid them," Luna observed to Ro, not bothered by the rudeness. He smiled with her.

"Can't believe somebody could get us stuck in a bloody binding contract," he sighed meditatively a moment later. "Think it was a good idea me finally being the one?"

She considered, understanding that he meant Gryffindor Harry. "It seems like it ought to keep things more even this year, rather than like in my first. Instead of one of you being despised, you'll probably both just be disliked."

"Unless we win," he said gloomily.

"Do you think you might?" Luna asked.

He just shrugged. "We're trying to think of some way we might be able to take advantage of being twins, except that everybody'll suspect us of cheating like that whether we do or not. Might as well try going after Hermione in a minute and see if she'll start researching the past Tournaments for patterns and stuff."

"She does seem good with things in books," Luna agreed diplomatically, trying to be nice.

"Yeah, she's got her uses. You know anything that might help?"

Luna thought, tilting her head so the shapes of things weren't as immediately recognizable. "I don't think I do. I wonder whether it's really a tournament or a game."

"Huh?"

"If it's a tournament, you'll have to rely on your skills to get through; if it's a game, they should give you some tool or clue that's a key if you can realize and figure it out in time."

"Huh." Ro tilted his head the opposite way. "Probably a tournament."

"It would probably be a good idea to watch for a key, though--"

He nodded. "'Cause if there is, it ups our odds of getting through alive."

Luna smiled encouragingly as nonverbal reinforcement of her support. "Just remember to watch with your brain to notice it."

* * *

"--Look at that! _Look_, ladies and gentlemen--it looks like independent Champion Harry Potter is going to complete the task with just _one spell_ against the most dangerous dragon of the lot--the model's charmwork is holding up wonderfully to the demands from _Engorgio_, that's credit to its designers for that, you can even still see the number four there on its side--and that Horntail is reacting just as if another dragon were threatening her nest! There goes Mr. Potter--it looks like she hasn't even noticed him!--_he's got the egg, ladies and gentlemen, the fourth Champion finishes in under five minutes!_--"

Luna stood up in her seat to be able to see above the crowd screaming themselves hoarse, beaming.

* * *

Ri pelted across the open circle around the Cup ahead of Viktor Krum, gasping, head down with effort, and Luna knew he was giving his all to win despite the twins' agreement that they didn't want any more attention of any kind than they already got. They were still human, and boys; they couldn't help wanting approval, and to succeed in competition.

--Ri's hand closed around the shiny handle, and quite suddenly he wasn't there. For just an instant Luna stared like everybody else; then she rose and quickly stepped out of her aisle and down the stands, hurrying instinctively toward Ro. She didn't know what had happened, but she knew just from the brothers being so abruptly separated that it was disastrous. Ro's white, stunned face when she met him was merely further proof.

"S-something--bad," he said, his eyes not actually looking at her, his hands making little grasping motions for something that wasn't there. "Scared--don't know--dark--I can't do anything, I'm not there, he needs to be here--"

"Don't focus," she urged, trying to make her thoughts order and progress as rationally as she could. "Of course you have to be with him; stay there--come and get your broom so you can get to him, and I'll call your godfather and get Harry's broom so he can get back when you find him."

Ro followed her blindly, so she took his hand as they ran through the castle, and he grasped and straddled his broom in the same motion as soon as she passed it to him, throwing himself out the dorm window. Luna pattered back down the stairs to the common room and dropped to her knees in front of the fireplace, sweeping a pinch of Floo powder out of the tiny jar someone had left on the mantle.

"Harry Potter's godfather, emergency," she pronounced, since she didn't know his address, and was inwardly relieved when the flames went green. She promptly stuck her head in them.

The square of the room visible on the other side was dark, and it appeared empty. But then, she reminded herself, Sirius Black was in hiding and probably suspicious even of friends. So she swallowed quickly and repeated, "If Harry Potter's godfather is there, please, there's an emergency that he ought to be quite concerned about."

She waited briefly, holding her breath, and decided that she would have to go after Ro in another moment whether she had a Grim following her or not, before he got out of sight without her knowing where. She was just about to pull her head back from the fire when a man's voice rasped, "What?"

"I don't know," she explained quickly. "Harry got to the Cup and vanished, so Harry's taken his broom after him and I'm going to bring the other one so they can get back faster--"

"Get back," the voice ordered, and Sirius Black stepped through the very second after she had obeyed.

"That way," she continued, pointing out the window to Ro's barely visible form in the distance, and picking up Ri's Firebolt. Sirius Black snatched it from her and was flying off in pursuit even as he swung his leg over it. Luna had no time to protest that she had meant to go too.

After a moment of watching pensively from the same window, though, she decided that it was probably better for them to have the less weight, and as an afterthought removed herself from the Gryffindor tower before anyone could find her there. She went back outside, and saw several of the professors scrambling madly around the site of the Cup, conversing furiously about Portkeys and conspiracy theories. She drifted around the edge, not wanting to retake her place in the disturbed crowd, and tried to think what else she could do.

After a moment she went back inside and climbed up to the Owlery, suspecting that the twins' owl might be agitated since they were. It was much easier to find solace and patience with animals than with people.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Let's see, notes for chapter two... Umbridge isn't Defense professor in fifth year because the twins didn't go screaming 'Voldemort's back' after the final TriWizard task like in canon. You can make up your own rationale for why her replacement wound up with the position (shouldn't be hard considering Dumbledore's chronic lack of applicants). Also, apologies for the twins' letter writing ability--besides being teenage boys, they're not especially articulate. :) Hopefully they're decipherable anyway.

One reviewer pointed out last chapter that for some reason both the twins' Firebolts were in the Gryffindor dorm. There was a reason for that, of course, very subtle and actually critical to the plot. You see, er... *launches into long, complicated explanation involving the twins' habit of switching places, Quidditch practices, several random other factors and the convenience of flying instead of walking around on certain occasions* ...So yeah. There we go. Now you know. (Darn plot holes.)

Again, review pretty please. :) Everybody who does gets... their own personal shiny review reply (sparkles imaginary. But lots of them!).

.

**Jackalopes and Jobberknolls**

_Dear Luna,_

_That sounds stupid but that's how letters are always supposed to start, right? So... we're okay, yeah, and Sirius is too. Dunno if you heard what happened? Dumbledore said we'll need to take Occlumency lessons next term to cut the scar connection, so we ordered a book on it and figure that's how we've managed to know stuff with one another and share it now so it's always both of us. Useful to have conscious control of it, probably, but just to keep it __our__ control; we're not cutting out one another. Ought to have it learned at least good enough by next term to keep whoever he finds to teach us out. No point in telling grownups we won't do something, especially because they won't let us do it together and it's letting somebody else in our head._

_Sirius said he'll get us to his place by sometime after our birthday, but dunno if that'll really work out, and it looks like we're stuck here at least until then, so you'll have to keep us updated on anything important that happens there. Your dad runs a magazine or something, right? Hedwig ought to drop by every now and again just since she gets locked up so much around here, and gets sullen about it. If it's a bother though we'll send her somewhere else._

.

_Hello Harry, (that's an acceptable greeting too, or at least it should be since it's acceptable when speaking, and letters are speaking to one another on paper)_

_Happy early birthday to both of you. I hope you don't mind my sending presents; I hadn't even thought of it until a very sweet little Ashwinder happened to creep out of our kitchen fireplace. It's a pity neither of you were there to talk to it, and that it didn't live long enough to find some way to send it to you, since I'm sure it would have been much happier with you. But I managed to save a couple of its eggs, though they might not hatch with the Freezing Charm I had to put on them to make sure they didn't set anything on fire. If they don't they're supposed to be very valuable as potions ingredients._

_I've only heard speculations about the Portkey (and about Harry's disappearance, but I didn't tell anyone, so it's all remarkably silly), and Dumbledore sent everyone home so quickly. There's nothing about you in the papers except your winning the Tournament; the Portkey is just a short mention since no one seems to know why it was there or where it went. That's what Daddy wants to write about, but I'll put him onto something else if you'd rather it not be talked about. I've heard Prophet reporters talk about the right of the public to know things, but I think the right of the private to stay private is more important, otherwise it's just gossip, not news. Most people don't seem to want to know what they ought to anyway._

_It sounds perfectly reasonable to me that you can teach yourselves this Occlumency better than someone else can. It's not as if you're not a special case, so you know yourselves better with it than anyone else would. Do you mind if I order a copy of that book too? I wasn't aware of it before, unless I forgot what I knew, and it sounds curious. Daddy might even get more interested in that than anything else, it could be connected to so many things._

_Your owl is beautiful. Can she eat crisps?_

_Your friend,_

_Luna_

.

_Hello then Luna,_

_Yeah, she can eat anything. The book's called Behind the Eye of the Beholder, we told Hedwig to deliver it for you if you use that discount owl-order thing._

_What happened is Voldemort's back. Moody was working for him all along, put us in the tournament, rigged the Cup and made sure Ri'd get it. It went to a graveyard set up for a ritual to make a body for V; needed one of our's blood, didn't matter which. Wormtail was there. Has a silver hand now instead of a missing finger. Ri tried to mess up the ritual, didn't work, made V mad. Said he was going to call his Death Eaters and they were going to duel, to prove who'd win, but cut him loose to punish him for almost ruining the body first. Ri broke V's wand half-Transfigured and scampered, managed to hide until Ro and Grim found him, flew back with Grim hexing a couple DEs hunting us. Probably killed one. Un-Transfigured Ri while flying, made it back looking like in one piece._

_Your dad probably wouldn't want to write about it. Or anybody read about it._

_Thanks for the present._

_Harry_

* * *

"It's a lovely bathroom."

Ri snorted lackadaisically, executed a turn by flipping over underwater, and came back up to stroke toward the other end on the surface. Luna had never seen a bathtub large enough to swim in before. "Old man probably only made me prefect because he thought it'd keep me busy."

"Keep you busy as opposed to what?" Luna remarked puzzledly.

.

_"So, children. I am given to understand that your previous education in Defense Against the Dark Arts has been piecemeal, and only truly consisted of a smattering of dangerous beasts and curses."_

_The man that was the new professor smiled, but Luna felt no desire to smile back and no one else seemed to either. It wasn't the kind of smile that invited a response, or made any pretense to be pleasant or sociable as smiles were generally expected to be. It was just an expression. He seemed, by putting it on, to be pointing that out._

_"Anything will be considered dark if it has enough teeth or provokes enough screaming. That hardly qualifies it as a Dark Art."_

.

Ri shrugged fluidly, diving and turning and rising again, now stroking away from her. "I dunno. Keeping my mind off my terrible experience; keeping me and Ro a little farther apart?"

Luna wrinkled her nose in a frown. "Gryffindor went," she reminded him. Slytherin Harry was the new prefect.

"He knows it was me." Ri didn't elaborate, and Luna didn't ask even though she would have liked to know more about what happened. The twins closed up when pressed; they would only give unasked, and all the adults who knew had probably been pressing them a lot already.

So all she said was, "Your hair looks a bit greasy now it's wet. Come back over here and I'll wash it for you."

.

_"The Dark Arts, my children, are to magic as poisons are to potions. Invisible. Intangible. Tempting."_

_The man's voice was hypnotic, his expression unchanged. Pointing that out too by example instead of with words. Luna had always thought there was much more that could be communicated than only what was restricted to words. She held herself perfectly still in her seat, waiting to decide if this man was dangerous, and better avoided or trustworthy._

_"The Dark Arts offer to make things easier, faster, simpler. Offers what every man wants and is restricted from achieving. Wealth. Power. Control."_

_His unfeeling eyes picked over each of them, impartial, examining, unrelenting, like black marble beetle's eyes. Luna's gaze wandered away out the window overlooking the grounds and Forbidden Forest before he reached her._

_"You will hear many pretty speeches about wealth and power throughout your lifetimes, children, but the only matter of any true significance is control."_

.

"So what kind of special herbal concoction is this stuff, anyway?"

Ri leaned against the tub rim with his eyes closed, floating, while Luna massaged his dark mop.

"It's healthier than all those chemicals they put in your Muggle commercial products. That's quite horrifying, you know, but I like this shampoo idea rather than an ordinary cleaning charm. It might help straighten your hair like you'd like. And I'm working on a version that's also sure to repel nargles."

She smiled, but Ri didn't, which she took to mean he was genuinely relaxing. So she kept shampooing, and considered talking about her experiments with making soap.

"So stupid how they all react to everything." His voice wasn't exactly dreamy, but half elsewhere, and more resigned to the fact than disgusted for the moment. "And insisting so much on Occlumency. Wish they'd just leave us alone."

"Your Head of House isn't helping?" Luna ventured. She'd thought it would be at least a bit of a good thing to have a familiar figure responsible when they'd told her who was teaching them.

"He hates us. He just buries it. We already buried everything; shared it, buried it, fine now. It was bad, it's over. It's not like wizards have half the imagination Muggle torture can make you suffer anyway."

Luna assumed he wasn't speaking from personal experience. She thought about asking just to be sure, then decided that was simply too personal and kept silent. She'd heard of some very nasty things in Muggle history; he was probably thinking about those too.

"Not like being connected to him isn't anything we can't handle anyway." Ri's voice was starting to sound drowsier, with less of the usual guard between mind and mouth. "So many weird dreams... green flashes, fear in dying eyes, the endless corridor... killing people and searching for something. Just dreams."

.

_"You control enemies with hatred, control subordinates with fear or respect, control friends and family with affection and obligation."_

_Black marble beetle-eyes. Luna tried to remember what Ministry department he was from, could only recall that he was supposed to be close to the Minister._

_"The Dark Arts, children, in fact do not require any spells at all beyond the intent of the human mind... and they are so insidious because they do not even require conscious intent. Manipulation is a fact of human existence and self-interest, avoidable only by being aware of it... but so few are."_

_Luna stared at his lips as they moved rather than at his eyes. They turned to her unerringly anyway, and she gazed out the window again._

_"Take, for example, a pair of children. In ordinary interaction, one may ask the other to lend him a quill, and the other does so. One's motivation, conscious or not, is to not have to fetch a quill himself, the other's is to match the expectations of courtesy. If the first's motivation is unconscious, he may have merely forgotten to bring his own quill; if it is conscious, he may have chosen not to bother, with the knowledge that the other child would provide one for him thanks to the expectations of courtesy. The second child is the same in both scenarios, but when the first is conscious of everyday human manipulation, the second, rather than providing a favor, is being used."_

_Beetle eyes. Luna looked at the man, not at her classmates, and her thoughts ran ahead following what she knew were his._

_"There is danger in one person being aware where another is not; such are opportunities for the Dark Arts to creep in, whisper, linger--and grow. Danger in that often even if the other person is made aware they will reject it, for trust is a powerful form of manipulation. Especially in the bonds that are considered inviolable--between family. Friends. Partners."_

_Luna thought about Ri and Ro. About how they were magical twins, how Ro had known to a degree what Ri was experiencing, how the Occlumency book had described occasional inexplicable mental marvels. How they had been two of the only boys who could resist the Beauxbatons veela champion's allure since only one of them was ever near her at a time._

_"And what lasting, invisible damage is possible in a relationship between one person who is aware and one who is unaware, in a relationship where trust should be unquestioning, in a bond as close as--brothers?" Black beetle eyes, flicking to each of them, forcing them to think. Soft voice, no longer so obviously ensnaring._

_How the false-professor's instructional Imperius had failed so quickly on both of them individually; how they were withstanding the teachers' best efforts to invade their inaccurate adamant resistance in Occlumency lessons because one couldn't look into two pairs of eyes at once, and no one had yet thought to try it with them together anyway._

_"The Dark Arts' influence is insidious, children."_

_How they had been so sure even in their third year that their worst fear was that the magical world would succeed in dividing them._

_"As exampled by former Death Eaters?"_

_The other children started; the professor's impassioned eyes pinned the unexpected voice like a butterfly to a card._

_Dreamy Luna Lovegood stood and stared back._

_"You must agree they're a perfect example, right, Professor, considering how many currently work for the Ministry?"_

_A fly under glass, trapped in a microscope, but the body didn't struggle and her single-faceted eyes were clear as a polished reflection._

_"Any Ministry personnel involved in that period were exempted of knowledge or responsibility, Miss Lovegood."_

_Luna thought, briefly, of the personal histories assembled in her father's notes in possible relation to various conspiracies and cover-ups. Of the faces Harry had described behind the blank white oval masks that had hunted them in their escape._

_"But the Dark Arts' influence is insidious, Professor--it's always made me rather nervous the way the Ministry's appointed executioner always uses such brutal physical tools to kill. That hasn't really been considered civilized for the last century, has it? But didn't the papers of the time report that Walden MacNair was excused because he was proved a victim of the Imperius curse, and could never in real life do the kinds of things he had been forced to before?"_

_Every other student was staring at her. Listening._

_She sat back down, looked at him with calm expectance._

.

"Dreams matter." Luna scooped a handful of water and began to rinse the shampoo out, tickling his ears a bit in the process. "Don't you have Defense in half an hour?"

He grimaced slightly, shifting under her fingers. "Might skip. I think I hate him."

Luna could say nothing to that; it seemed unfortunately easy for Harry to hate all his teachers, even Professor Flitwick. She didn't think the adults in their lives had done much for the twins. At least they had Sirius now (to the degree that he was an adult, from what little they'd told her of him).

"He's subtle," she agreed. "He sounds right about a lot, but even if he is he hasn't taught anything useful if we ever find ourselves at wandpoint someday."

"Brick stupid, with You-Know-Who back," Ri grunted, eyes still closed, as Luna fetched a towel and began rubbing his hair dry. "Trying to make us sitting ducks, the lot of us."

"I heard a rumor that some students want to start another club to try to learn that themselves."

She didn't mention who she'd heard they wanted to lead it. His grimace proved he already knew.

"Well, you are probably the only students in the school who've learned _Expecto Patronum_ and _Imperio_."

"Like we could actually try that here without getting tossed in Azkaban," he scoffed. "Why should we go to so much effort, maybe even get in trouble, to do all them a favor?"

Luna considered, and laid down a finger for each point she found. "At least for most people, a favor given is advance for a favor returned. With the Dark Lord probably targeting you in future, and the favor you're giving being the means to return it in future..."

He looked up at her through the fingers on his forehead, slightly dubious, but already considering. "Harry Potter's Army? You really think these titches could do it?"

"It will probably take a real situation to see. That's not a very subtle name for a school club, though."

Ri clambered out of the giant tub, and started toweling himself dry from the waist up while water streamed down in little rivulets from his swimming trunks. "Hermione suggested the Defense Association..."

"If it's settled by popular vote, there's already a winner."

He looked wary. Luna smiled.

"It is a good one, in terms of disguising its true purpose. The Harry Potter Fan Club."

* * *

"Sirius is dead," Ri told her hollowly as soon as she found them after her release from the Hospital Wing, not looking at her, knees drawn up under his chin. Ro was staring sightlessly across the lake. "He tripped into the Veil pushing me away from it--I was in Slytherin colors too, he knew it was _me_. And he didn't even hesitate."

Luna had gone to the Department of Mysteries with them along with the half-dozen other Club members, but they'd gotten separated in the confusion. "It's good to know when your family loves you," she agreed quietly. "Just remember their voices--when it hurts, you're just living 'til you see them again."

"But we barely got to see him. We didn't get to know him." Ro's voice was pained but just as much wistful. "Do I miss what I did get to know about him or what I'll never get to now?"

"He cared about _both_ of us." Ri's had taken on a curiously flat quality. "If we told him he'd've been calling us Ri and Ro even if he got it wrong half the time, but we hadn't yet. And now we'll only get to imagine what that would've been like. We'll never come home to it."

"How do I get used to him just not being there?" Ro whispered. "Why does it feel so strange?"

Luna simply sat and hugged them, and they all stayed that way for a very long time, as the sun slowly sank in the deepening sky in front of them.

Finally Ri stirred and murmured, "Need to go pack our trunks."

Ro seemed to awake as if from a dream. "Train leaves tomorrow?" He blinked, as if surprised of the fact. Luna just squeezed his arm--she could recall many perfectly ordinary things surprising her by simply still being there after her mother's death. When she had lost something so important, how was it that lesser things weren't gone too?

"I'll help you pack," she offered, according to those memories. "You shouldn't have to remember him alone."

"Bloody Dursleys," Ri muttered with a bit more energy. She didn't say a word about language; just thought quietly on what she could do to help them on their way back up to the castle.

* * *

"What happened?" Ri demanded as soon as his brother returned to the Gryffindor dorm, slamming the door behind him. He and Luna probably weren't supposed to be there, but neither of them cared.

"Tell you when there aren't any SPYING EARS around," Ro said through gritted teeth, even though they were the only three in the room.

He didn't speak again until they had settled in a train compartment, Luna having the presence of mind to quietly charm the door Imperturbable; then he finally exploded.

"We _can't_ spend the summer at your house, even if we just don't tell them," he snarled, slamming his fist into the wall. "We _have_ to stay with the _Dursleys_, for our own bloody _protection_! He tells us--_me_--_now_, why we're there in the first place, after it's too late to do any good! A _prophecy_... a prophecy..." Tears actually leaked from his eyes, and he punched the wall again when speech failed him. Ri's knuckles were whiteish as he gripped his brother's arm.

"Voldemort killed us because he thought we could kill him," Ro finally went on in a simmering, flat voice. "Our mother's love saved us--so _Dumbledore_ placed us in the protection of that love, with her only other family."

Ri's lips parted in a silent snarl.

"As long as we're there, Voldemort won't be able to hurt us. The Order no doubt will be watching us again anyway. We have to write to them every three days to assure them everything's okay." Both boys looked like they were starting to simmer.

"You'd think that would make them think it might not be the safest place then, wouldn't it?" Luna remarked puzzledly. They both loosened slightly as they looked at her.

"You think?" Ri drawled with biting sarcasm, and she giggled, then sat up with sudden inspiration.

"The point is really that you're safe where the Dark Lord won't find you, isn't it? Why should that have to be where your schoolteachers say?"

The boys glanced at one another, and without a word leaned intently toward her. She turned and smiled up at their large snowy white owl caged on the rack above her seat.

"Are any of our Charms textbooks handy?"

* * *

When the Hogwarts train reached King's Cross station, Luna immediately departed to find her father for a short, remarkably serene conversation and the twins scowled wordlessly at the Order contingent waiting uncomfortably near the Dursleys, who were scowling even harder.

"Write you when we get there," Ri said coolly before any of them could speak. His Hogwarts tie, still on, was red and gold. "Hope you manage to get something productive done this summer with us out of your hair."

Most of the members looked slightly more uncomfortable. Ro didn't help by muttering audibly, "Wardens."

They left, not a word spoken between them and their relatives. Approximately an hour or so later, Harry's owl arrived at Grimmauld Place and took off again promptly as soon as its letter was untied, not even waiting for a treat. Order member Nymphadora Tonks sighed guiltily as she watched the bird wing away before unfolding the paper and scanning the brief note:

_All-_

_Fine. Don't expect to hear much. Check back in three days._

She sighed again and tossed it on the kitchen counter.

Three days later, Harry's owl failed to reappear, and the Order guard that had dutifully set up their posts shortly after the Dursleys arrived home from the station could only report that neither Harry had ventured outside even once and they'd kept the shade drawn in their room. The one member capable of magically seeing through walls took a brief break from his own mission to check and reported that neither brother was present anywhere in the house. It was almost by accident that Tonks picked up the old note, and discovered its message had changed:

_Previous still applies. Off to hunt jackalopes. Back September 1st--probably._


	3. Interlude

_Interlude:_

"So many more stars out here, even than at Hogwarts," Ro mused, his hands folded behind his head as he leaned back against the half-reclined front seat of their old convertible.

"See any constellations?" Ri asked idly, on his right. "Dunno if I'd recognize any."

"I never learned constellations," Luna said dreamily, her gaze, too, wandering around the vast diamond field. "Picking out shapes is just for fun; it's not part of the stars' magic. Celestial magic, Daddy calls it, magic that doesn't take any notice of us little people waving our sticks around on our single earth. It even works for muggles; they just don't know about it."

"What is it?" Ro asked very quietly.

Luna propped herself up on her elbows a little so it would be easier to point for emphasis if necessary. "It's quite simple. Look up at the stars and find one that attracts you, that catches your eye--that is you. The stars closest to you are the people closest to you, expanding outward to everyone who's ever touched your life, even that you don't remember."

"Think that still works for Sirius?" Ri whispered.

Luna smiled. "If he's important to you, he's close to you. Celestial magic shows the truth, not the temporary truth it might seem like down here."

"But how can you ever find the same star twice?" Ro asked, his eyes flicking around the sky. "The 'you' one?"

"You don't," Luna explained simply. "You're never the exact same person when you look up; neither is the sky. Your star will just catch your eye."

"Kinda more like Divination than Astronomy then, huh?" Ri said distantly. "Should've considered that class."

"It probably wouldn't have been the same," Luna remarked. "Our magic is so much smaller than celestial magic; we could only try to imitate it."

"Works for me," Ro murmured.

They watched the stars in silence for a moment; then Luna quietly climbed out of the backseat and slipped in between them, feeling the twins probably needed the weak comfort of someone else to hug just this once while the darkness enfolded them all, even if the stars now showed them that they weren't truly alone. And if a silent tear or two dampened tiny spots on her shirt, she never gave any indication, and all three eventually drifted into weary sleep together, the more peaceful for the secret gradually growing release.

* * *

A/N: Okay, yes, I'm evil. :D Before the lynch mob gears up, though, I solemnly promise I'll post the next (real) chapter tomorrow. This just had to be included in the story and didn't quite flow properly with the beginning or end of chapters two and three--and I enjoy being evil. Occasionally.

This will probably just start the lynch mob up again, but after a few reviews I've gotten I decided I'd better go ahead and explain the shipping of this story: There will never be a threesome with Luna and the twins; it doesn't fit any of their natures. Future projections for them as individuals with Luna or the witch taking a bigger role next chapter (you can probably guess who), though, can be whatever you like--there's plenty of room. This story only goes up to the final confrontation with Voldemort and then a brief epilogue.


	4. Chapter 3

A/N: A couple people have noticed that back in the twins' second year, their telling Professor Flitwick about hearing a snake wouldn't have actually done anything to close the Chamber. They were right. :) And in this chapter we find out what else the twins did that actually took care of that... so read on, then review!

.

**Jackalopes and Jobberknolls**

"Jackalopes?" the bushy-haired girl cried the instant Luna and the twins appeared on Platform Nine and Three Quarters, accosting them without a word of greeting. She reached Ri first and threw her arms around him in a fierce hug, even though he was wearing Slytherin colors. "_Jackalopes_? You bloody idiots, do you have any idea how worried everyone's been? And they wouldn't even have _told_ me if they hadn't had any bloody idea what jackalopes were!"

"Hermione, you're swearing," Ro said in a tone of wonder, sliding half behind Luna so he wasn't available to hug. "That's concerning. You never swear."

She pulled back her arm and punched him in the shoulder before he had time to dodge. "Bloody _idiot_!" she repeated, then hugged him too while he was still blinking in shock. When she let him go, she said briskly in her perfectly usual way, "Well, come on, the train's filling up and I don't want to lose my compartment lecturing you two. You _three_; that had to have been your idea. _Jackalopes_!"

Luna just smiled at her as they headed for the train. "It's nice to see you again too. Did you enjoy your vacation?"

The older girl humphed. "Yes, actually, except for one _small_ detail."

The twins immediately tried to look chastised. They still mostly only looked off-balanced, though.

"I went traveling with my parents nearly the whole time. Mostly in France. And how did you find America?"

"It was lovely," Luna said, politely not noticing her slightly acerbic tone. "We got to see a lot on the road trips to and from the coast. The Rocky Mountains were almost on the opposite one. Do you know how they tried to find us?"

"No doubt they ran themselves ragged searching for any traces of Floo, Portkey or Apparition," she sniffed, ushering them into an empty compartment. The boys sat down on one bench, the girls on the opposite. "I like to hope it occurred to them to check the airports."

Luna beamed. The boys smiled at her. "I thought so. We took a ship."

Hermione looked startled, then slightly approving before she remembered herself. "Well. Do you... feel better about things, now?"

It wasn't really very tactful, but she'd tried. The boys glanced at one another.

"Yeah," Ro said. "At least while we're not around anyone else yet. How come you're talking to both of us?"

Luna couldn't decide if she looked affronted or embarrassed.

"Because you're both here. Besides--I'm starting to think it doesn't really matter."

The boys glanced at one another again. Luna observed more interestedly.

"Why?" Ri asked.

"Well, you don't really seem that different. I mean, you're twins, but... you both talk and act the same no matter which one of you it is. That I've noticed, anyway."

She sat back a little farther in her seat, face slightly pink. Luna wondered if she thought it was unusual to tell two brothers they were much the same person.

"But I'm a Slytherin," Ro pointed out. They had switched colors sometime between the platform and compartment.

She automatically glanced at their ties, paused, and frowned. Then she threw up her hands and said, "I don't care; I can't even tell you apart! I could have sworn--"

Ri and Ro wore matching tiny grins. "Okay," Ri said, their ties switching again while she was glancing at his face.

She started and stared hard at them both, then raised her gaze to their faces with dawning comprehension. Then she sat back in her seat again with a little shake of her head and said nothing.

"I've never been to France," Luna said before they could all fall into silence. "Though I saw it once when Daddy and I were tracking a crumple-horned snorkack along the Swiss Alps. Is it very pretty up close?"

* * *

Luna hadn't been aware Harry was even in the library until she heard the bushy-haired Hermione say tentatively, "Er, hi."

Luna looked up and then around just in case it had become conceivable that she was the one being addressed, but didn't see the older girl. One of the twins' voices--they were too similar to tell apart from only a few words--responded with enough distance that she recognized they were standing an aisle away and probably didn't know she was there. "Oh, hey."

Luna thought the other witch probably intended to have privacy meeting Harry here and considered moving to another table, but she was curious about what she might want to talk about, and the twins viewed listening to other people's interesting conversations as perfectly natural. So she made herself comfortable and concentrated on being a soundless, unmoving, unseen pair of ears.

"Something up?" Harry prompted after a moment had passed in slightly awkward silence.

"Ah, well, not really; I just... I was just wondering a little about your trip through the States."

"What about it?"

Luna felt pleased at his tone; it was mostly indifferent and vaguely questioning instead of guarded and wary as it probably would have been before. The brothers were growing, and healing, in spite of everyone else's influence. But then she reminded herself that she was nothing but a pair of ears and concentrated on processing sound again.

"What it was like." The other girl's voice was quiet. "If you don't mind my asking."

There was a brief pause. Luna knew the twin was Ro because he answered, knew Harry was still Harry despite talking so to someone else because the only things he mentioned were the small irrelevant ones. But it was still a remarkable step for him to talk to anyone about those things, because they were--almost--the only ones that mattered.

"It was a big country." And, she realized again with mild self-reproval, she was being a very poor pair of ears. "So much land, so much air, like you could go on forever and always see new places. It felt bigger than Europe, not just Britain."

The Hermione girl made a quiet noise of encouragment.

"The food was weird--some of the exact same shops as we have here, but the look and the style; you'd never guess it. 'Fast food,' they have everywhere over there. We'd be driving along one of the interstates, pick an exit and turn off, and they were all alike--tall, tall signs for gas stations and car lots and fast food shops, over empty parking lots and muffled roads. Sort of."

"Drove?" Hermione repeated, apparently not noticing his last slightly self-conscious disclaimer. "Harry, you know how to drive?"

Luna _knew_--despite only being a pair of ears--that Ro shrugged. "Wasn't that hard. We wanted to try a road trip, so we rented a car and learned while we went."

Hermione uttered a series of small sounds of undeterminable meaning, that sounded like weak disapproval.

"It was fun," Ro went on, indifferently. "Just heading west, stopping and doing whatever we felt like, no maps, watches or calendars. Hard to miss something as big as a mountain range. Listened to lots of music too--probably know more American songs than we've ever heard British now. Country and rock and pop. We liked 'em."

There was another brief pause at the apparent end of his recitation. Then Hermione's voice resumed more collectedly, "That does sound... nice. I've traveled around Europe a bit with my parents, but never like that. But where did you stay every night if you didn't have an itinerary?"

"Motels sometimes. Outside sometimes. Mostly just in the car."

"But--Harry, er--two boys and a girl--in a car?"

Luna would have laughed out loud, except that wouldn't be nice, so she settled for smiling widely at the unaware illustrated witch bustling around the open page of her book. Some things simply transcended being ears.

"Yeah?" Ro's voice was baffled and rather impatient at his Housemate's attempt at discretion. "It was an old convertible; we'd fold the front seat down to the back and there'd be just enough room. Luna's pretty skinny. So're we."

"Er... right," Hermione agreed weakly after a moment. Probably she had decided the rest was none of her business after all; most people regarded possible romantic liaisons so in Luna's experience, except for the ones who regarded them as entirely their business. She didn't think Hermione was that kind. But it surprised her that the witch who seemed so intelligent academically was apparently a bit ignorant regarding people--how could the twins think of recognizing girls that way when they didn't yet recognize themselves as individuals? Two people could really only share one as friends. And Luna thought friends were really all they needed right now.

* * *

"So," Harry said, looking around at all the students gathered in the Room of Requirement. "Hermione tells me you're all interested in keeping the Club going this year, with me teaching."

Nearly everyone nodded. Luna didn't bother since it was more interesting to watch everyone else.

"Despite the foulup we got into in the Ministry?"

There was a moment of general shifting and many glances that didn't meet anyone's gazes. Then a male voice from near the back of the room spoke up, "Well... we don't... we don't want to try anything like that again, honestly, but... it was only thanks to the Club that all of us made it out with all our working bits still in order."

"Mostly," someone else muttered, followed by a third exasperated-sounding mutter, "No fatalities, that's pretty sodding impressive for a bunch of teenagers facing off against _You-Know-Who's_ servants!"

"We don't want to be asking for trouble anymore," another voice volunteered. "I can't--I lost my da in the last war, and I don't want my mum to lose me too. I just want to be able to defend myself if I have to now."

"That's fine." Harry's face was impassive, but Luna knew the brothers had been genuinely surprised that any of the members still wanted anything to do with them after their disastrous clash with older, better-trained wizards in their attempt to rescue Sirius Black. That none of the others students were willing to back them up again was, unfortunately, probably expected. "If you want me working with you, you'd better be willing to make those changes anyway. I was there too, and I've done a lot of growing up this summer. Voldemort's back as well as his Death Eaters, even if you lot didn't see him, and he wants me dead. I don't particularly care about marks anymore, I care about surviving. That's what I'm going to be focusing on. If you're here and want me to teach you, that's what you're going to be learning. That's one."

There were murmurs of assent, and some expressions that looked like relief, around the room. Luna smiled in anticipation.

"Two. This is Harry Potter."

Ri stepped aside, and Ro stepped up from behind him. They stood together, identical, while shock and alarm rippled through the room.

"If you don't like it, get over it. If you can't, leave." Ri's voice was flat, brooking no argument. "We're brothers, and we're twins. We are both Harry Potter. We are both Parselmouths, both Voldemort survivors, both Quidditch champions and both Potions Outstandings, and from now on there is no difference between us. We are one person in two bodies."

Both their ties turned completely black, leaving absolutely no way to tell them apart. Luna thought they both looked more distinguished.

"So, er," Hermione said brightly, as everyone stared. "Any questions?"

Everyone remained burningly silent.

"All right then, let's get started. Er, Harry?"

"Most of us have had our first couple Defense lessons by now, so we should discuss what we're going to be learning there and then decide how we want to supplement it here," Ro said pleasantly. "Given that we apparently have a competent professor this year, even if he is about as approachable as a cactus."

Luna saw a few weak smiles in response. Mentally she giggled; that was very clever of the twins, making Gryffindor Harry stern and Slytherin Harry nice while they hadn't started moving around and everyone thought they knew who was who. She thought everyone ought to get used to it easily enough; they really were going to be like one person in two bodies.

But the redhead who hadn't been hanging around as much lately had his face twisted up into a sort of pain, as though trying to reconcile their change was terribly hard. Luna suspected that he was going to continue hanging around less as soon as he figured out that there was no guarantee which was which outside the Room anymore either.

* * *

The twins shared with Luna the exact wording of their prophecy one night after Ro finished another exclusive "lesson" on defeating the Dark Lord with Headmaster Dumbledore. Luna knew each of those sessions was gradually increasing their stress level since the ancient wizard seemed to make a point of only wanting Gryffindor Harry in them, and could tell the twins apart, thus forcing them to remain separate in that regard even while they were able to exchange with each other everywhere else in the school more freely and often now. She couldn't blame them for resenting the man, and spent several puzzled minutes trying to work out, not the interpretation of the prophecy, but how Dumbledore might have interpreted it to possibly prompt his otherwise inexplicable insistence.

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord..." she mused, her gaze happening to fix on the still-life "muggle period" painting in front of her depicting a pod of dolphins jumping through a series of puddles in a desert. The desert reminded her of some of the areas she and the twins had traveled through in America, and she dropped one hand to her side in an absent stroking motion beside her crossed legs where she sat on the floor.

"I'd just like to know why he's so bloody sure it's me," Ro growled, sitting like her but with a stiff back and radiating a bare restraint from movement. It was after curfew, and stillness made detection much less likely, even though almost no one in the castle seemed to know of the art club's gallery besides its members. Luna liked the paintings, and the twins liked the isolation, especially when they needed to feel like escaping from the Headmaster's reach.

Luna tilted her head back against the wall behind her, looking to the corner where wall met ceiling for clarity, shadowed though it was with only moonlight for their illumination. "Either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives..." she chanted to herself, almost in sing-song.

The key to interpreting like Dumbledore, she decided, must be the fact that Harry was two, not one. The prophecy seemed to mention only two including the Dark Lord, but if three were inserted instead...

"Perhaps he thinks one of you is supposed to die at the Dark Lord's hand," she mused slowly, reasoning out the first possibility, "because both of you can't live while the Dark Lord does... but I don't think that makes very much sense."

Ri made a face. "If that's so, what's the point?"

Luna nodded agreeably. "Or, perhaps, he thinks one of you is supposed to kill the other..." She wrinkled her nose, this time out-reasoning herself before she even finished the second half, but finished it anyway since she didn't like to go around leaving half-thoughts hanging behind, unspoken and forgotten. "Because one of you and the Dark Lord can't live while the other one of you does...?"

Both boys snorted.

"It's a load of bollocks any way you look at it," Ro opined grumpily.

Luna nodded--the prophecy simply didn't make sense unless it only meant two people. She thought the Headmaster must be both as intelligent and as mad as he was often said to be to have managed to come up with any believable interpretation that included three. But he obviously had, or else had decided that one of the twins simply wasn't included, and that was why he trying to gently nudge them apart into different directions with his school-related authority.

Then she thought about the concept of shared souls she had read about once, that had even been mentioned in the twins' Occlumency book, and how much closer they were than individual right now even if they had made cautious, possibly unconscious slight progress in becoming more normal twins since she had met them.

"Why shouldn't you both be the one?" she suggested aloud, finding it even more logical when she heard it through her ears.

Ri and Ro tilted their heads in mirror image of each other, considering, and looking more open to the suggestion than they had to any other interpretations.

"The Dark Lord will mark him as his equal," Ri said slowly.

Luna smiled. "You've both got the scar."

Ro's hand automatically brushed his forehead. "Always thought we'd probably just shared that like everything else from whoever had it first," he murmured, fingers rubbing back and forth over the temple bearing the faint mark for once rather than almost immediately falling away like Luna had always seen before.

"Maybe sharing is the power the Dark Lord knows not," she suggested, liking the idea when she considered it since anyone not a twin could never possibly truly understand it. She knew she only understood that she didn't.

"_Dumbledore_ says it's love," Ro said with heavy sarcasm, even though he still sounded partly preoccupied. "If he's right this whole world's screwed, and we don't really care if he'd just leave us alone... but how could we defeat anyone by both of us, if it's sharing...?"

"Maybe--if one of us dies, we could still--not," Ri murmured, troubled, almost as though the words were forced out unwillingly, "but I don't want to even try."

Luna squeezed his hand in silent sympathy, but didn't try to offer any foundationless reassurance. It was a hard thing to have to try to think about, and an unwelcome one, but they had been drawn into the struggle before they even knew what it was and they weren't being allowed to avoid it anymore.

"Unless he were to kill both of us," Ro muttered darkly, but then shifted his position with an abrupt heave of motion and asked her, "You ever heard of anything called Horcruxes?"

Both she and the boys knew that by only calling Ro for the "lessons" Dumbledore meant him to keep everything in them secret, but the twins certainly didn't care and Luna was always interested in anything they told her, regardless of what other people considered it, and she thought surely the Headmaster must know better too however he wished it to be otherwise.

So without the slightest concern she responded, wrinkling her nose thoughtfully, "What do you know about them?"

He made a tight unhappy shrug of one shoulder, the one nearer her so she could see it. "Voldemort asked one of his teachers about them when he was in Hogwarts, and Dumbledore says it's important."

"Says we're supposed to get the full memory of what the teacher told him, like we could any better when he's the bloody Legilimens," Ri snorted, referring to himself and his brother as a single unit despite the Headmaster's distinction.

"Bet whatever's wrong with his hand is getting to his brain--looks like cursed gangrene. Course wizards would never think of just cutting it off no matter what it does," Ro muttered darkly.

"The Dark Lord went to Hogwarts?" Luna asked, mildly surprised, ignoring the pessimistic prediction of their headmaster's decline of health. It might easily be true; no normal damage would make a wizard's hand look blackened, withered, even if he did seem to have taken to wearing some old-looking heavy ring in a likely attempt to counter the effect. If it was true then at least the old man had the comfort of presumably being aware of Death's approach--she certainly hoped for the same herself whenever it happened. She would like to talk with Death a little before she went away and met her mother again.

Both the twins nodded at her question. "His real name's Tom Riddle."

Luna had an excellent memory, though its paths wandered in a labrythine structure rather than anything linear or even webbed like most people's, and after only a moment a particular memory floated into the open center of her more conscious mind with a brightness of not just relevance but usefulness. "Wasn't that talking diary you mentioned finding during the Chamber scare the property of a T. M. Riddle?"

The boys stared at her, and at each other, with eyes wide with wonder and realization.

"We dumped it in our trunk," Ro said, mouth almost seeming to move on its own as he voiced a rapid progression of thought.

"Never trust anything if you can't see where it keeps its brain, Ron's dad said--not that we ever kept diaries anyway..." Ri murmured.

"It's from when he was in school," Ro breathed. "It's a piece of Voldemort right at our fingertips that doesn't know any better about what happened since... we just have to fool it..."

"Or bargain with it, or manipulate it," Ri finished. "An imprint can't be as smart as a person... how much of an imprint though, how did he make it... have to make sure it's not still connected to him..."

The twins got to their feet quickly, faces animated rather than grim as they had been when they came in, and Luna was surprised and pleased when Ro absently and with impatient eagerness reached out a hand to pull her to her feet when she started the motion, a basic courtesy from anyone else but progress, she was sure, from the touch-shy distrusting teens. She smiled as they bid hurried undertoned goodnights and the three split off into different directions outside the gallery to creep back to their dorms, her steps more relaxed, meandering at about the pace of a small animal. She spared a moment to hope that the unexpected tool would give the twins some of the advantage they needed to eventually come out of the growing war with the Dark Lord with their hearts and minds intact--or at least no less battered than the school and greater wizarding world had already unintentionally inflicted.

* * *

"Any word on what's going to happen?" Harry asked her after Dumbledore's funeral at the end of the school year.

Luna nodded. "Daddy's heard Hogwarts will reopen, but he said with the Dark Lord's hold in the current Ministry that's probably worse, not better."

Ri merely nodded also, hands stuck in his pockets. "We're not coming back anyway. Voldemort's going to take over the entire country now that there's no one left he fears anymore." There was a moment of silence; then he said abruptly, "You gonna come?"

She blinked. "Where?"

He shrugged. "Dunno yet. With us. After Voldemort's Horcruxes we guess, since he's after us and we can't kill him without them gone. Hermione wants to, says we need somebody to organize everything, but dunno if we'll let anybody."

Luna blinked again, thoughtfully. "I don't know either," she said. "I'd like to, but I'm not sure it wouldn't be better for me to stay and find things out. A lot's going to be happening you won't know of when you're hiding."

Ri relaxed marginally, which Luna understood--the twins very rarely put themselves into such vulnerable positions as suggesting they wanted someone.

"How could we talk, though?" he pointed out. "Can't owl. We're setting ours loose."

Luna nodded, wrinkling her brow into a frown. "I'll try to think of something different."


	5. Chapter 4

A/N: Here we go, folks, the last chapter of this story except for an epilogue! This one requires a bit more general knowledge of canon, since I couldn't (/forgot to) find places to mention things like the twins having their Invisibility Cloak and the Harry Potter Fan Club using the galleons to communicate meeting times (I usually prefer my stories to be self-contained if possible, but, well, almost everybody knows this stuff anyway). I've probably skewed canon timeline wildly for seventh year since it suited my Authorial Purpose, so I make no apology for that. Hopefully I've managed to make everything understandable enough that you guys can follow along anyway. *crosses fingers*

Oh, a bit of explanation required for the beginning: The symbol at the end of the first paragraph is supposed to be that of the Deathly Hallows--the stick inside the circle inside the triangle. Since my computer doesn't have that symbol, I had to go with some Russian letter as the closest thing I could find (who knows if it will even show up on everybody's screens). Also, 'Na' is a shortening of Luna, basically along the lines of a shorter nickname the twins use for her like she uses Ri and Ro for them. I just never managed (/forgot again) to work mentioning that into the story.

This chapter is for everyone who believes in Luna. ^_^

.

**Jackalopes and Jobberknolls**

The new school year had gone on long enough that Luna had become accustomed to all the changes under the new Death Eater Headmaster when one day the old Club member galleon she always kept in her pocket began radiating soft heat. She skipped into the Room of Requirement, already occupied by only a couple of other students seeking haven, and found that its date had not been changed but rather replaced entirely, with the tiny, cryptic characters _N A __Ф ? R I O_.

She smiled down at it, running through her mind everything she had seen that might have contained that symbol; it looked familiar. The habit had become useful since the library was no longer very safe for private research.

When she settled on the only place she could remember it, she seated herself at the nice little desk supplied for her in the corner of the room, selected a quill and parchment from her schoolbag, and began scribbling contentedly in her old oblivious way:

_Hello Rio,_

_There have been a lot of exploits being talked about since you left that I think are really other people trying to resist but not wanting to be caught, I think you might be surprised how many (I can understand you being in two places at once every now and again, but not three or four it seems). It's very interesting to see who's really surprised and who isn't and how people really feel when Harry Potter is mentioned._

_A lot of the Club members are also here still, but a vote went round to change the name now the times are more dangerous and less silly. I think you'll like it better like everyone else does: Friends of Harry Potter. They mean it, too, even if the name still only mentions one instead of both._

_I don't know how much I know of your symbol myself, but it's central to one of Daddy's favorite secret societies of wizards back through the ages--they're very curious because they've never been a formal society, only people who found others' accounts and shared the belief. One of their firmest theories is that Beedle the Bard's tale of the Three Brothers is a true account of Death's being tricked into introducing immortal objects of power onto the earthly plane, but having tricked two of the brothers in return by giving them objects which would lead them and other mortals after them back to Death in the end. They created your symbol to represent all three of Death's gifts: the line in the center as the Elder Wand, the circle as the Resurrection Stone, and the outer triangle as Death's own Cloak of Invisibility. I'm sorry if this doesn't sound like particularly helpful advice. There have been a lot of conspiracies about Death's Hallows in past centuries, especially the Wand, but I don't know which ones would be useful to you._

_It's strange how things seem to be getting worse all the time, until there doesn't seem any way to be able to fix it all, and yet when I'm safely asleep I still have some of the same dreams I always have since I was much younger, of woods and fields and secret faces peeking out to play with me. It's very reassuring; it makes me feel that everything will turn out right even if I can't imagine how yet. It's particularly nice now when Daddy is being pressed more and more not to be printing what he wants about certain things. He's never been able to hold up well against pressure without Mum._

_So I hope you have some dreams that help you, Rio, considering how much worse it must be for you. I slip out onto the grounds sometimes to track the stars and think about celestial magic. You get to see them much more often, don't you?_

_It may be a while before you get this even after I've written it, while I figure out how to deliver it safely. I can't say how long since I've got to decide now. I suppose you'll know anyway when it gets to you, though, if whatever I find works, and then we should be able to write one another with that way as often we need._

_Your friend,_

_Luna_

A brush against her ankle distracted her as she closed the letter, and she looked down absently, then smiled at the possible solution to deliveries.

* * *

The next time Luna saw the twins was unexpected, but very welcome. Instead of going home for Christmas she had wound up in a makeshift dungeon of the Dark Lord's, and although she had spent her time trying to make the other political prisoners feel a bit better she had missed her real friends and being able to encourage her father to keep publishing his truthful resistance papers despite her hostage status. Then one afternoon Ri and Ro's faces appeared on the other side of her small barred window, looking tense and understandably on edge and surprised.

"Luna?" one hissed.

"Hello!" Luna whispered back happily. "What are you doing here?"

"A gang of Snatchers got Hermione. We followed them," the other explained tersely.

"She'll be upstairs then, since they haven't brought her down," Luna directed, much lighter of mind than she had been in a long while just from the pleasure of seeing familiar faces. "Is Benji with you?"

"Yeah, he's here," and she smiled at her pet as it appeared by the window, cuddling with her hands as she helped ease its slender body through the bars.

"I'll be out in a moment then. Go on."

The twins disappeared, off to rescue the bushy-haired witch, while Luna encouraged her pet through the taller bars enclosing the front of her cell to fetch a wand for her to free herself. Benji was a marvelously clever little creature at understanding its mistress, even smarter than post owls in her estimation, and perfect for going unnoticed.

Both twins and girls escaped barely intact, meeting up outside and fleeing without any regard for dignity, only stopping after at least half a dozen rapid chain Apparitions when none of them were left with any breath to continue. Luna wished she had had enough time to free everyone else imprisoned too, but kept it to herself since she was sure the other three didn't need to feel any worse judging by their appearances after months of living as fugitives.

When they all recovered from their haphazard relocating and immediate casting of protective wards, the twins caught Luna up on their activities to that point, which developed into an informal council of war. The brothers no longer much believed in the purpose of the Horcrux hunt the late Headmaster had been setting Gryffindor Harry on after his death; they had collected several, but the ones remaining seemed unreachable and they didn't even have a means to destroy the ones they had. Both boys were grim, worn down, and Hermione looked bleak besides also withdrawn after a probable torture session.

"That's why the Hallows, then?" Luna asked, finding it as much a matter of course to believe in them as in the soul remnants.

"That fairy tale about the three brothers who cheated Death crossing a river," Ro said, in a flat tone that was likely a product of hiding for survival under a hostile regime. "We decided it's real."

"So we're going to do the same," Ri said in an even flatter tone. "Our Cloak was Death's own. He'd probably want it back most. We'll try trading it for him taking Snakeface Riddle or something that'll let us kill him."

Hermione grimaced weakly but said nothing, which made Luna think that the twins must have already shared the plan with her before. Luna nodded slowly, trying to consider it as carefully and rationally as possible considering its importance.

"It seems likely to me Death would quite like to have him, since he's escaped before," she noted. "But asking for help probably isn't the same as accepting a gift offered with Death, so I imagine it will be difficult. And don't the Horcruxes mean that Death can't take him, or at least not all of him?"

"There has to be a way around that," Ri said, with a lack of both hope and desperation that Luna understood as having absolutely no other options left. "We'll ask."

Luna nodded. "How are you going to try to reach Death?" she asked simply.

"Try to cheat him, going by the story," Ro answered, looking weary. "The three brothers conjured a bridge over a fast river that killed swimmers, and Death showed up to try to trick them into gifts that would send them back to him anyway. So we figure, get into a situation most people die in, most _should_ die in maybe, get out of it with some magic trick, and wait."

Luna nodded again, reasonably. "You might have to try several times. There are so many more people in the world now, Death is probably busier," she pointed out.

"Got to think of one first," Ro sighed. "Any ideas?"

Luna wrinkled her nose, thinking about it as clearly as she could. "It wouldn't be exactly the same," she said finally, "but what if you inhaled some kind of incense or poison, and then we bring you back with an antidote?"

Hermione made a tiny sound of distress.

"That'd be talking to him before we cheat him, though," Ri said slowly, frowning a little as he evidently also thought. "Have to call him out or something... and there was nobody else around in the brothers' tale. You girls'd have to stay with us to give us the antidote--what if that would make him not show up?"

"But Death wouldn't be coming for us," Luna said simply. "I was with my mother when she left, and I didn't see Death then. Our presence shouldn't make a difference."

"Okay," Ro said even more slowly. "Let's do it, then. If it doesn't work we'll come up with something else."

"Can you find us a poison?" Ri asked her.

"_Harry_!" Hermione broke out, sounding anguished, but when met by both boys' expressionless faces seemed to subside into herself and offered no more protest, though she still looked like she didn't agree with their plan. Luna felt abstract sympathy for her, but it was the twins' right to decide their own actions and she would support them as best she could.

"We're in a forest, so I'm sure I can find one that will work," she estimated, casting a calm eye over the plants in sight for any henbane, hellebore, belladonna or even poison oak. "Let's find an antidote first--an emetic should work as long as we're careful with how soon we give it to you. Charcoal would make a good substitute for a bezoar."

In a reasonably short time they had collected the necessary herbs and recast the necessary wards to hide them from any searchers physical or magical, and the twins sat down back to back and closed their eyes while methodically ingesting their poison with identical motions, leaving the two girls to wait the fifteen minutes Hermione had unwillingly calculated to be safe before expelling the poison from their systems. The first one or two passed for them in silence.

"Do you really believe this? What they're doing?" the older witch finally abruptly broke it, looking and sounding exhausted and possibly near tears when she spoke. Luna thought that it couldn't have been easy on her traveling and hiding with the twins, just as it clearly hadn't been for them. They had to find a resolution soon, with them worn down to bare endurance, or the boys might simply disappear into the South American jungle or some such place and spend the rest of their lives watching over their shoulder for the Dark Lord determined to kill them. "Or are you just mad?"

Luna blinked slowly and regarded her.

"You don't believe in Death?" she asked, mildly surprised.

"You do? As a--a _person_?" the other girl returned.

Luna automatically petted the little animal crouching at her side, then paused as the problem and way to explain presented themselves to her. "You don't believe in what you can't see?" she asked, merely to confirm.

"No," Hermione said, with a firmness that might have come from ingrained thought or hopelessness.

"Most people don't. Even most wizards." Luna started stroking her pet again. "But muggles don't see auguries or knarls. Some of them see dragons or unicorns sometimes, but in those accounts only a few did, not all of them there. I believe the ones who do see are the ones who already believed in them--even if just from their own fairy tales."

"Or that's just a matter of varying sensitivity to magic. Muggleborns' ability must come from something, after all," Hermione countered, sounding irritable.

"Maybe," Luna nodded agreeably. "But I think belief is part of magic, and muggles can't see magical creatures because they don't believe in them. And I think there are countless more magical creatures that even wizards don't see because they don't believe in them either."

The other witch just stared at her for a moment. "Is that what it is you do? Believe in anything, whether there's any proof or not?"

"Yes," Luna said simply. "Belief is my proof."

"But that's--" she began, and then suddenly stopped, looked faintly struck, and started again slowly, "Does this--is this connected with... with however you've exchanged letters with Harry? They'd only tell me I wouldn't believe..."

Luna smiled, gently lifting her pet into her lap and fondling it while the other girl stared. "This is Benji. I brought him back with me from America the summer before last since his mother died and he was only an infant," she explained. "He knows me and he knows the twins, so he's able to find the three of us."

Hermione kept staring, although Luna couldn't tell if she could actually see. "Is--is it...?"

"Benji is a jackalope," Luna agreed serenely. "He must still be young though. His antlers haven't pronged yet. Would you like to try petting him?"

"I--don't--" The older witch hesitated, looking torn. Luna remembered how she always seemed so scholarly, fact-oriented, in school even if she had seemed to be improving in her interactions with the twins. "A real jackalope?" she asked weakly.

"I think it's because they're shy," Luna said. "Or perhaps it's simply the best defense from human attention, considering muggles' history with conservation."

"I suppose that might be logical," the other girl said slowly, then reached out one hand tentatively to the creature in Luna's lap. Her expression briefly transformed when when her fingers touched the soft bristly coat of fur and skin overlaying compact muscles and quick-beating heart. Luna crooned in her throat in case her pet needed reassurance at the unfamiliar touch.

"Merlin's _pants_!" she whispered a moment later, making Luna suppress the urge to giggle. "A _jackalope_!"

Then she turned her head hesitantly, and worriedly, toward the unmoving boys. "So, with this..."

"I believe what they believe," Luna said to her simply but firmly. "And whatever I can do to help them when they get back, I will. If they make a deal with Death, I want them to survive it."

"I think it's been long enough. Let's get the emetic," Hermione said tightly.

They flushed the poison out, bringing both boys out of their stupor, and Hermione cleaned up the mess of their vomiting while Luna passed them as much water as they could swallow in between their panting and retching. Both boys looked terrible, their skin sweaty and gray-tinged, their faces haggard, and their eyes wide and haunted.

"It worked?" Luna confirmed with quiet sympathy.

Ri nodded once, jerkily, without speaking before accepting and gulping down more charcoal-powdered water. Ro gagged briefly from swallowing too fast, then shoved the cup away and sank back into the grass, staring up at the sky and still panting.

"Take your time," Hermione whispered.

Ri jerked his head in a sideways motion, then rasped, "Haven't got it."

"Is there enough time to tell us or must we act now?" Luna asked practically. The older witch sent her a glance which she interpreted as meaning that the boys certainly did need to recover, which she agreed with, but they didn't know what the boys now did. She hoped, briefly and suddenly, that the twins felt open enough with her and Hermione to share whatever they had just gone through--they were friends, but she didn't imagine Death could ever be talked about easily.

Ri flopped down beside his brother, letting one arm fall sideways onto his stomach, and Ro grunted and then explained shortly with evident effort, "Was watching us anyway with all these scrapes. Tried to just wait us out since we only had a few minutes instead of dealing."

That didn't surprise Luna; Death would probably dislike such mortal presumption even with the offer of a Hallow returned.

"Wants Riddle though. Can't find inanimate Horcruxes. Deal's all three Hallows," Ro rasped on. "Got to get the Wand before Riddle."

"All three? And the Horcruxes still? That's an awfully one-sided deal!" Hermione protested, sounding horrified.

Luna only looked at the twins--still grim, still haggard, now touched by a meeting that hardly any creature lived after--and thought that if that were the entire deal Death must want the Dark Lord very badly indeed. It was only sensible the responsibility of collecting Horcruxes remain with them if Death was insensate to those soul fragments, and only reasonable for Death to demand as much as possible from two teens willing to promise anything for the sake of having a future. Doing a favor for mere mortals in exchange for only its own possessions seemed strangely generous.

"The Stone's in the Snitch Dumbledore gave us. We only need the Wand," Ro reiterated snappishly. "Said Dumbledore had that too--"

Ri sat up suddenly with a hoarse yell, then started swearing. "In his tomb! He just figured it out; he's already going!"

The twins had mastered their connection with the Dark Lord to the point of consciously accessing his mind, Luna realized. Ro snarled as he pushed himself to his feet and Hermione just groaned despondently as if it were one more piece of bad news after a long string of it.

"Do you think you're ready?" Luna asked, trying to hide her concern for her friends since it wouldn't help.

"'S'what we've been practicing everything every other minute the last couple of years for. Just got to get the Wand first or away from him," Ro muttered, his eyes gone unfocused and his body suddenly radiating barely contained frenetic energy. "If we get there first we can throw out all the Weasley pranks we fronted to distract him."

"One free shot," Ri murmured hollowly, his gaze even blanker but unnaturally intense. "We're a Horcrux too he can kill first."

"And you've got the Cloak, which hides you from Death," Luna agreed, centering herself so she could set aside worry and think to better purpose despite the tenseness of the situation. "Take Benji. Maybe he can help."

"All right. Go," Hermione ordered, rallying suddenly and fiercely. "You take V--You-Know-Who; we'll take care of the last Horcruxes." She looked slightly terrified as well as focused, which made Luna wonder if she had any plan for how to carry out her promise.

The twins only nodded as they finished dismantling the wards and disApparated. Luna asked calmly, "Which Horcruxes haven't you got already?"

"Nagini, but she shouldn't be a problem since she's with You-Know-Who," the older witch recited, speaking rapidly but taking a deep breath, bringing herself under control. "Ravenclaw's diadem which we haven't found, and Hufflepuff's Cup, which... we'll have to hope Death can summon anyway."

"Where is it?"

"Gringotts. Which only You-Know-Who has ever successfully broken into," she said with such calm Luna heard it bordering hysteria. "In Bellatrix Lestrange's vault."

"Well, for the diadem, why don't you ask the Grey Lady?"

Hermione blinked. "The Ravenclaw House ghost?"

"She was Lady Ravenclaw's daughter in life," Luna explained. The Hogwarts ghosts were fascinating to discuss history with, but she wasn't surprised that never seemed to have occurred to the older girl.

Hermione nodded firmly. "Right then. Hogwarts. Side-Apparate with me and I'll take us to one of the secret tunnels to get in faster."

They did so, and were in the castle in only a few moments while somewhere outside Ri and Ro were likely racing feverishly to the late Headmaster's tomb to confront the Dark Lord over the Elder Wand. Luna parted company with the other girl in the dungeons--who didn't even appear to notice as she hurried on to her destination--when it occurred to her that she might have an advantage in thinking over the twins and bushy-haired witch since she had been raised in the wizarding culture. Luna wasn't any kind of warrior despite her training in the Club, but she could possibly get the Hufflepuff Horcrux the twins needed. The realization of how brought no hesitation, only serenity. She turned down a corridor toward the Slytherin dormitories and was inwardly pleased to almost immediately run into Draco Malfoy without having to search or ask for him.

"_Lovegood_?" he hissed, eyes widening incredulously.

His surprise seemed understandable considering she was fairly certain it was Malfoy Manor she had been imprisoned in only hours before, though she had never seen him while there, but Luna had no time to waste. "Harry is about to fight the Dark Lord," she informed him calmly. "Do you believe he has a chance to win?"

The blond wizard hesitated, which was answer enough for Luna since the only politic one was an immediate 'No.'

"Then I have a proposition that will ensure your family's safety if Harry does and mine if he doesn't," she went on quickly and precisely. "If you propose to me with one token which I return at the ceremony or else the betrothal is cancelled. From the vault of the Malfoy matriarch's family, if you don't mind, as that would be who I would become."

Draco Malfoy stared at her, with a glint in his pale eyes of desperation and hope, and grasping the meaning of her explanation quickly. "A token Harry needs?"

Luna nodded. "Right now."

"Where is it?"

"Your aunt Bellatrix's vault."

He nodded, almost as if to himself. "I can get in." He gave her a hard look. "And I'd never see this token again?"

Luna shook her head.

He nodded again once, sharply. "So proposed."

"And accepted."

"Dobby!"

A house elf, dressed in a ragged pillowcase, appeared with a small _pop_ in answer.

"Take me and my fiancée here to Gringotts' lobby immediately," he ordered. "Time is of the essence!"

"Y-Yes Master," the little creature squeaked, taking both their hands and popping them away into a well-lit white marble hall. Draco Malfoy told the elf to wait and strode up to one of the tellers, Luna following, and shortly they were entering the née Black sisters' vault. She located the Cup, magnetizing herself to the subtle allure of the Dark soul magic infused in it, and returned to the cart to take them back to the surface, acutely aware of every second that passed despite her dreamlike state of calm--since, after all, stress could only cloud her mind and not enable her to move faster. In the lobby the elf took their hands again and Luna noticed its shivering with detached sympathy, so as it transported them back to the castle she removed her bedraggled Ravenclaw scarf she had been wearing when captured and draped it around the little being's neck. It dropped their hands immediately upon arrival to touch the dirty cloth in disbelief, stammering dazedly, "M-Miss... Miss will-be Malfoy has given Dobby clothes? Dobby is free?"

"You'd better make sure this is worth it, Lovegood," Draco Malfoy ordered tightly. "I really don't want to ever see you again."

Luna smiled and pecked him on the cheek since he was technically her first fiancé, then patted the elf's knobby head as she pattered quickly away. "Thank you. You won't."

She arrived outside the darkened castle to see a riotous light show of spellcasting and fireworks sputtering around Dumbledore's tomb, which she converged on almost simultaneously with Hermione. By the time they reached it, only moments later, the battle had died down and all was eerily quiet under the rapidly fallen dusk. Luna saw what looked like the entire herd of thestrals from the Forbidden Forest standing silently at the trees' edge, all their attention evidently focused on the frozen tableau beside the moonlit stone monument.

Death was there, Luna could feel it, although she could only see the specter in the twins', and the Dark Lord's, eyes. Ri was holding a wand which was surely the Elder against the empty-handed Dark Lord, while Ro had the Dark Lord's huge serpent Nagini pinned in what appeared to be a rapidly vibrating Bubblehead charm, incapacitated by snakes' sensitivity to motion and sound waves. The twins' Cloak was cast aside, a small golden sphere gleaming under a fold of it, alongside a leather-bound diary and dull gold locket. And somewhere in the midst, invisible but tangible, Death was waiting.

Hermione must have been able to feel it too, because she slowed as she approached just like Luna. "Here," she whispered, laying down an old jeweled diadem with the other lost things, and then stepping back as though she had no other part. Luna did the same with the heavy goblet she carried, unremarked, and then watched with detached, utterly calm fascination as Death came.

Neither of the twins said a word, and neither did the Dark Lord; Ri only flicked his gaze to the snake-faced man from an empty point in the air, then mouthed six syllables that sent out a flash of green light from the wand he was holding, and the Dark Lord half-opened his near-lipless mouth and started to draw in a breath. Then his eyes rolled up in his his head and quietly, like a pantomime, his body crumpled in on itself and a thin stream of vapor, a shade, seemed to trickle out of it and disappear. The snake under Ro's guard convulsed suddenly in its cage, thrashed soundlessly, and then went limp; the pile of articles beside the Cloak cracked, one by one--even the golden Snitch, which revealed an oversized ring inside it--as more wisps were drawn out and dispelled. The twins stared for a moment at the presence only they could see, and then quite suddenly they both dropped to the ground too, eyes rolling.

Hermione uttered a choked gasp from beside Luna, startling her out of her reverie as Death passed. For a moment she thought wistfully of her mother and the many things she would like to someday know of Death, but then the present drew her back and she reminded the other girl reassuringly, "They said they were a Horcrux too. Death must have taken it from them."

"Harry!" Hermione gasped, shedding her paralysis and stumbling to Ri.

Luna, accordingly, went to Ro, noting vaguely as she did that the Cloak and therefore mostly likely also the ring was gone. "Harry?" she called gently, kneeling and touching his shoulder. "It's all right now. You won."

Benji hopped over, favoring one forepaw and looking nearly as ragged as the twins, and Luna smiled as it nudged its nose into the unconscious teen's neck. Ro groaned, then slowly opened his eyes and made a brief effort to push himself up, gaze immediately turning to where Ri was groggily doing the same, wand still in hand. Hermione didn't appear to have noticed that fact--Luna supposed it was probably better not to tell her, but was faintly pleased that her intuition had been right.

Ro glanced up at her, first with reservation and then relaxation when she smiled, understanding her acceptance. The twins were the likeliest people she knew to agree to whatever longterm price Death demanded for a favor, and it wouldn't change her opinion of them. They needed her, and she liked them, as friends.

So Luna smiled, helping Ro to sit up while Hermione mirrored the motion with Ri, and repeated, "It's all right now. You can be whoever you want, and do whatever you like. You did it."

"We did it," Ro echoed, dazed, hand going up to his scar. "We made it. Still us." His fingers groped as if searching for something newly missing around the faint red line. His gaze connected to Ri's, and a world of communication passed between them without a sound.

Luna left them there for a moment, placidly retrieving Hufflepuff's damaged Cup and levitating it out to the middle of the lake before dropping it in, ending her brief betrothal, then drifted back and informed Hermione, "Harry and I will be at my home if anyone needs to know. Daddy will want to print the news and we need a very long relaxing rest from everything."

The bushy-haired witch started to nod, glancing toward the slumbering castle, then stopped abruptly and said, "So do I--let people think whatever they want for a few hours; they always have anyway."

Luna smiled, carefully gathering her pet into the crook of one arm, and the four linked hands and Apparated away.


	6. Epilogue

_Epilogue:_

It took Luna a moment to orient herself when she Flooed into the Ministry of Magic one drizzly afternoon, partly from the necessity of soothing the small blue-speckled bird hunched onto her shoulder--Iden still seemed frightened of all magical travel, but refused to separate from her for long since she had found it as a lone nestling--then went on to the stairs rather than the lifts so as not to perturb her passenger any further.

Passing the fourth floor she saw Hermione Granger busily organizing parchments behind a large corner-shaped desk, and as the older witch (no longer quite so bushy-haired as she once was) also happened to look up and notice her, Luna paused and meandered over.

"Hello, Luna. What brings you here today?" she asked politely.

"Getting a Portkey to America," Luna answered placidly. "I thought I should introduce Rolf to the twins."

Hermione frowned. "Rolf?"

Luna smiled. Rolf Scamander had happened to pass by her sitting on a bench one day and stopped to stare with evident delight and fascination, not at her or Iden, but at the jackalope crinkling its nose by her feet. "I might marry him someday."

Hermione blinked in surprise, but quickly smoothed it over. "So you want the boys' approval before committing to anything like that," she nodded. "But you know Harry is down in Wales right now, after that Rob Roche figure; he's not likely to take a vacation soon."

Luna wondered idly if Rob Roche would prove merely a criminal the Auror department assigned to Harry Potter or one of the other wizards to have cheated Death that the specter desired a second chance at, but gave it little attention. Both twins were so circumspect in carrying out that agreement with Death that she had heard no rumors of a current bearer of the Elder Wand, and no suspicions about the occasional reasonable deaths of some of the people Harry Potter came into contact with.

So she merely smiled again, unbothered, and assured the other witch, "It doesn't have to be both at once. It's time Benji goes home to have a chance at a family; it's not fair to keep him here forever without any of his kind."

"That's responsible of you, especially considering how small the population likely is," Hermione said approvingly, then glanced at the bird sheltering as close as possible underneath Luna's ear and asked, "Oh, is that a jobberknoll?"

"This is Iden." She gently coaxed her pet onto her finger, and Hermione kindly refrained from leaning in too close while she studied the faintly trembling creature.

"Is it murmuring?" Hermione drew back in alarm. "They only make noise when they're about to die--"

"I've found that to be a misconception," Luna reassured her. "She makes sound whenever she's stressed, the more the worse it gets, independent of her strength or alertness. She's nervous now because of all the bustle around--she's very shy." She didn't mention, even to Hermione, that Iden also had the perfect memory for sound of all jobberknolls and could actually therefore be quite useful as a messenger or recorder if the bird were spoken to and then deliberately distressed. It was better for the reclusive avians if wizardkind continued to want only their feathers for memory-related potions.

"Oh--the poor little thing." Hermione straightened and drew back a little further in evident sympathy, and was distracted by a paper-plane memo flying onto her desk and settling atop one of her neat stacks. "Well, say hello to Harry for me while you're over there, and let him know I'd like to know how he's doing if you would--"

"All right." Luna smiled, returning her bird to its perch on her shoulder, and made a note to herself to see if the twins were likely to reassure the other witch any time soon as to how well they really were. She thought they would no longer mind the idea much, they had made so much progress, but it was still their right to decide how much of their business to share rather than hers.

As far as the British wizarding world was concerned, the Boy-Who-Lived's brother had faded reasonably away--all but the two witches were still unaware of how regularly the twins switched places, taking turns with the burden of notoriety--but in America, taking turns with the unassuming job of a cross-country trucker without any inclination to greater ambition, they were known to be twins who went by Ri and Ro to everyone on their routes and wore a light and dark cowboy hat respectively to truthfully distinguish which one was there.

They had survived, and surmounted Britain's strictures on them, and were growing--although perhaps still slowly--into their own persons in the freedom of another country, Death's contract aside. She suspected Death was the only tie they had ever really held to British wizardkind anyway, even before they knew it, but they seemed to regard the specter as a master far less demanding than the general magical public, leaving them free to live as they chose around the single requirement of ensuring any cheaters were clever enough to deserve whatever extension of life they had won (still unbothered by the morality of such a task). Luna was proud of them.

"Would you like to come along?" she offered to Hermione, on impulse.

The other witch looked startled, and evinced slight hesitation, but not necessarily unwillingness. "Well--where is it you're going?"

"To the Rocky Mountains, but Rolf and I are going to start at the Blue Ridge." She smiled, recalling the beauty of her first cross-country journey, unchaperoned and unstructured, with the teenage twins. "That range is such rolling country, so colorful; sheer overgrown stone right beside you and then out to distant peaks and forests half a horizon away... if I were a bird Animagus I would have flung myself into the open air the first time I saw it and likely never made my way back." She returned mostly to her present surroundings from the memory, stroking Iden with one finger and contemplating whether she might lose the little jobberknoll to such temptation--she wouldn't blame anything with wings. "If you're not a bird Animagus, though, and your soul is firmly grounded, it's simply a long, lovely trip."

"It sounds like it." Hermione suppressed what looked like a smile, then relaxed her stance slightly and said, "Well... I do have some vacation time accumulated, and there's nothing critical that needs my attention here at the moment. I would like to see Harry where he seems to be so content... I suppose I could just come with you part way, and you and Rolf can have the jackalopes to yourself?"

"All right."

Luna smiled, and wondered, if the academic witch was still not quite comfortable with the existence of jackalopes, how she would react if she saw the twins' current trucking partner.

* * *

A/N: So there we have it--there is actually a jobberknoll in the story, not just in the title. ^_^ According to the HP Lexicon, jobberknolls are blue speckled birds that make one cry at the moment of their deaths consisting of every sound they've ever heard, backwards. I thought about it and decided Luna would learn more about them even if they're not mythological even to wizards.

Just to try to head off a few questions I'm sure most people will have: I don't have a specific time this takes place in mind beyond a few years after Hogwarts. I threw Rolf in because I like the idea of his and Luna's twins Lorcan and Lysander, but who she actually gets together with is up to your own imagination. Ditto the twins' current trucking partner.

Seriously. It could be anything. Although I like the idea of Luna having discovered that she and her dad never found crumple-horned snorkacks in Europe before because the species discovered they preferred America's warmer climes, and now random individuals regularly hitch rides from state to state with the twins just to see if there's anything better over the next horizon... they could be crazy adventurous things, those crumple-horned snorkacks. ;D

Thank you to everybody who's read this through with me, especially those of you who left such wonderful comments. I hope this little flight of fancy was as much fun to read as it was to write. ^_^


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